How Uber Eats Helps Enable Food Access
by Dana Kraushar, Applied Scientist — Mobility Research, and Julia Wunsch, Senior Public Policy Associate — Delivery
Uber’s role in improving access to transportation has been well-studied, and now we’re exploring how we can be a part of the solution for food access. This blog post analyzes Uber Eats order data from vulnerable communities before and during the pandemic, and finds that Uber Eats has improved food access across the U.S.
Uber Eats helps increase food access for underserved communities
The Brookings Institution recently released a report, Delivering to deserts: New data reveals the geography of digital access to food in the U.S., which studies the potential of technology and delivery services to help address food insecurity in the U.S. The report analyzed data from Uber Eats and other food delivery platforms, and found that these platforms have chipped away at geographic limitations to accessing food. The report found that:
- 90 percent of the U.S. population in low-income, low-access (LILA) census tracts can order from at least one food delivery platform.
- Coverage is nearly ubiquitous in urban environments: 95 percent and 99 percent of the population has access to at least one platform in metropolitan areas and in very large metropolitan areas, respectively.
These results show that meeting consumers where they are has shifted the paradigm of food accessibility, and prompted us to wonder: how does Uber Eats fit into this picture, and to what degree?
By combining Uber Eats delivery data with Federal definitions of low income and low access communities¹, we found that our impact extends across cities with access to the Uber Eats platform — and helps to expand food access in some of the country’s more disadvantaged communities. Our data shows that in 2021 alone, Uber Eats enabled the delivery of 226 million and 136 million orders to low-income and LILA communities, respectively.
From 2020–2021, Boston, Miami², Seattle, and Washington D.C. stood out as having consistently high demand from low-income and LILA communities. Notably, nearly half of the orders in Boston came from low-income areas, even though 32% of the population resides there. People in Boston’s LILA tracts placed orders roughly in proportion to their share of the population (20% of orders vs. 20% of the population).
Delivery was a lifeline for communities throughout the pandemic
We’ve known that delivery helped restaurants stay afloat and expand their reach as the pandemic forced many restaurants to limit their in-person dining. However, Uber Eats also provided a critical service to consumers who faced new limitations, sometimes on top of their usual barriers to obtaining food. Uber Eats orders grew sharply at the start of the pandemic and have remained high since then, showing that we’ve helped diverse swaths of the city obtain food from restaurants and grocery stores at a time when millions of Americans were unsure how to access their next meal.
During the pandemic we supported vulnerable populations by expanding Uber Eats ordering services, and partnering with Feeding America and the World Central Kitchen. We helped facilitate orders to the food insecure and home-bound elderly through Feeding America’s network of 200 food banks, and we enabled the delivery of over 300,000 meals to vulnerable populations in partnership with the World Central Kitchen. To further our efforts, we expanded Uber Eats ordering services to include a customer support phone line, which enables users without smartphones or broadband access to place their order via phone call, rather than through the app.
New York City, the first and hardest-hit U.S. city, saw clear growth in orders at the start of the pandemic. From January-February 2020 to April-May 2020, we saw Uber Eats transform into a viable solution for obtaining food, with orders in NYC low-income tracts growing 54%, compared to 36% in NYC overall. First-time consumers drove most of this growth: over the same period, the number of new users increased 76% in low-income neighborhoods, compared with 63% in the city overall.
Orders increased primarily in the outer boroughs, which have much larger low-income populations than Manhattan. The Bronx saw the largest growth in demand, with orders increasing 74%, versus a 37% increase for the city overall.
The initial spike in orders has kept pace in subsequent months, and NYC order volumes have continued to grow since March 2020. While pandemic restrictions may have initially introduced consumers to Uber Eats, many consumers are continuing to leverage our service as the world returns to normal.
Smaller cities stand to benefit from delivery’s reach
While food delivery platforms are widely accessible in large metropolitan areas, Uber Eats is also available in many smaller cities across the U.S. Medium-sized cities³ account for almost one tenth of the U.S. population and face unique challenges that delivery can help address, such as larger percentages of LILA residents and more acute accessibility challenges like sprawling suburbs and less extensive public transportation. Uber Eats helps bridge food access gaps in these cities at scale.
Among smaller metropolitan areas of this size, those with the highest rates of LILA tract populations tend to fall within the South and Midwest. Of mid-sized cities, Laredo, Texas; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Monroe, Louisiana; Flint, Michigan; Montgomery, Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia have the largest share of their overall populations living in LILA areas — almost double the national level (48% versus 27%).
LILA tracts collectively drove approximately 50% of orders in these cities from 2020–2021—nearly proportional to their share of the cities’ overall populations. Montgomery, Monroe, Las Cruces and Flint stand out for attributing more than their expected share of orders to LILA tracts. Uber Eats has a meaningful opportunity to enhance food access by meeting demand in cities like Laredo, where nearly 4 in 5 individuals live in low-income tracts and 3 in 5 live in LILA tracts.
We’re proud of the service we’ve provided to communities located in LILA tracts within smaller and medium-sized cities, but our findings show there is more we can do to meet demand. These cities remain top of mind as we work to address food insecurity across the country.
Eats expansion into grocery and our next steps
Consumer demand for delivery services has continued to increase, even months past the darkest days of the pandemic. Restaurant-prepared meals are only the beginning — by adding grocery to our suite of delivery options, we’re able to better connect communities to a range of goods they might not otherwise have access to. We’re committed to expanding the Uber Eats platform to communities across the country, so stay tuned as we continue growing and enhancing food access across the U.S. and globally.
Notes:
¹ To help us understand Eats’ role in expanding food access we used the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Access Research Atlas. The USDA has two primary measures of access: one based exclusively on income (“low income”), and another based on income and access to supermarkets (“low income, low access,” or LILA). Specifically, we’re using the USDA definition of LILA neighborhoods in which a significant number or share of the population is more than half a mile (for urban areas) or 10 miles (for rural areas) from the nearest grocery store.
² Among all cities, Miami’s LILA tracts have the second highest average orders per resident after NYC, but generate somewhat lower demand relative to their share of the city’s population. The fact that demand from Miami’s LILA tracts is high in absolute terms but low in relative terms speaks to exceptionally high order volumes in the city generally.
³ Between 250,000 and 500,000 residents
